Web Pages

Good Morning!

Following your assessment last week, I would like you to do a little bit more work on the audience and purpose of webpages. It is really important that you consider the context of a text in terms of what and who it is for. This should be at the heart of any piece of analysis. You also need to consider a much wider range of features when you are considering a text.

So, today you are going to explore the BBC homepages and complete the attached table in as much detail as possible. As you will see, you are asked to consider the impact on audience and purpose for each feature (and please feel free to add more features to the table!) The aim is for you to make the link between audience and purpose more consistently.

Download the following: Features Table Features Table

Link to: BBC Homepage

When you have done this, I would like you to post to your blog some advice about creating a successful webpage. This should be aimed at people who are fairly new to the internet! You have to make them understand the importance of audience and purpose. This can be completed this week and you can refer to advice already available online.

Have fun!

Nina

AS Language

Good Morning!

We need to sort out some admin for the handing in of first drafts. Most of you have handed in work through Turnitin - can you ensure that you have sent both pieces. I will open up the submission window again.

I also need a paper copy of your work to be handed in on Wednesday - again both pieces. This will mean I can give you very thorough feedback on your drafts. No hand in = no feedback and a note on Correro.

You need to start working on your commentaries in this lesson. These can be handed in on Monday 15th December - this means you have some time in the Assessment week to complete those.

Here is the powerpoint from a previous lesson to remind you how to approach the commentary:

Commentary

Speaking of the Assessment week, there will be an assessment on Monday 9th December in the lesson. It will be an analysis of a text linked to technology in some way. We will do some prep for this in Wednesday's lesson. Reviewing the frameworks would be a good start.

Phew! Any questions, just ask!

Nina

A2 Developing Writing and Categorising Genre

Hi!

Here is the presentation on identifying genre in children's writing for you to enjoy!

PPT Writing and Genre in CLA

Nina

AS Language and Technology

Hello!

We are beginning to consider the relationship between language and technology. To whet your appetite for this subject, I would like you to read and comment on a couple of articles.

• The following three articles are all about the relationship between language and texting. Read each of them and make notes on the viewpoints of the writers. Either post a review of the articles on your Blog or create a word document that you can save. What is your opinion on text speak? Has it had a negative effect on language? How do you text?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-483511/I-h8-txt-msgs-How-texting-wrecking-language.html

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/nov/11/mobilephones2

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jul/05/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview

• This article is about how technology has influenced new ways of using language. Can you think of any other new words that have come from use of the internet?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/oct/23/net-contributions-language

• When you have done all this.....I would like you to find a Blog you are interested and remind yourself of the language and stylistic conventions of the genre. We have looked at this briefly already. Follow this link to find some good blogs! Post your thoughts on your own Blog!

http://dailytekk.com/2013/01/14/the-100-best-most-interesting-blogs-and-websites-of-2013/#_0qXcvN


Happy Thinking!

Nina

A2 Learning to Read

Hello

Here is the Powerpoint from the lesson on how children learn to read.

Learning to Read PPT

Use it to jog your memory and support your notes.

Nina

A2 Work: Developing Reading Skills

Morning!

We have been considering how children learn to read. Jeanne Chall identified six stages of reading through her research into this area. Read the following article and make notes on each stage. Use the framework attached to help you.

Jeanne Chall

Chall Framework

Extension Work:

To what extent is Skinner's reinforcement theory important when a child is learning to read? What sort of reinforcement is used when teaching children to read?

How might an adult 'scaffold' a child's reading development when working with a child on a text? Which theorists describe the ways in which adults and children work together to develop independence in speech (we are now applying it to literacy development!)

A short film on teaching synthetic phonics - just for your interest! Will help consolidate what graphemes and phonemes are.

http://youtu.be/5wGfNiweEkI

Post your responses on your blogs.

Have fun!

Nina

AS Coursework Lesson 11 /11/ 13

Morning!

A few things for you to do today - so here goes!

• You need to make sure that you are enrolled onto Moodle for English Language as you will be required to submit your coursework through Turnitin (all drafts etc). The enrolment key is shakespeare (all lower case). Let me know if you have any problems doing this! There are instructions under the 'Moodle Help for Students' section.

• You need to start writing your coursework pieces. Remember this is just a starting point and I am not expecting perfection (yet!). You need to work on your coursework in today's lesson and throughout the week. I would like to see the first 300-500 words of BOTH pieces by next Monday. You need to submit these through Turnitin on Moodle. There is a deadline of 11pm on Sunday evening - after that Turnitin won't accept it.

• It is Equality, Diversity and Inclusion week and to celebrate the fact that we all have different opinions and ideas, I would like you to fill out a thought / speech bubble with a comment on why you think that English is a valuable course; what you have enjoyed so far and why...etc These will be displayed so be thoughtful and neat (as you can!)

Good Luck and as an academic once said to me 'you don't have to get a draft right, you just need to write!'

Nina

A2 Language Paper Unit 3

Hello A2 students!

Here is a link to the question paper and the data booklet for Unit 3. Most of you have had this but have a look and have a go at the CLA question.

http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/AQA-ENGB3-QP-JUN12.PDF

http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/AQA-ENGB3-DB-JUN12.PDF

Nina

AS Coursework

Hello AS Language Students

Here is an overview of what I am expecting to see from you when you return from the break.

• You need to know exactly what you are writing about and will have done some research on the subject matter (make sure you know where you have got your information from).
• You will know exactly who your audience is, as this will match the style model you have chosen for your work.
• Your style model needs to be clearly annotated with references to grammatical, lexical, phonological, graphalogical and discourse frameworks. This is all then linked to the genre, audience and purpose of each text.
• You need to ensure that the planning grid I gave you is filled in - this gives you (and me!) a summary of what you are doing.Coursework Grid

Please feel free to start writing your pieces. The first 300 words or so of each piece would be a really good start. The more you do now the better. Basically, you need to be in a position to start or continue writing on your return to college.

Also here is the Powerpoint on the coursework - just so you have the info:Coursework PPT

Please email me if you have any concerns, problems or want me to look through anything.

Looking forward to seeing your work - there are some lovely ideas developing already!

Nina

Blog on Blogs and other things

Hello AS Language Students!

Here is the Powerpoint from today's lesson, including the links to different blogs. Hope you find it useful to jog your memory about what we discussed.

Blog PPT

So, don't forget to find a blog to share with your fellow students next lesson, outlining its purpose, audience, stylistic and language features.

Nina

A2 Coursework

Good Morning!

Now you have a fairly clear idea what you are writing about and have collected your data, it is time to think about a systematic way of analysing it.

Analysis structure

Your analysis will form the main part of your investigation and you need to think carefully about how you will structure it. This will help you to approach your analysis in an organised and systematic way.You could organise it: 

• by text - exploring, analysing and discussing your hypotheses on an individual text basis. Your conclusion will bring them all together.
• by theme.
• by method - exploring, analysing and discussing all your texts a framework at a time or a specific aspect of a framework at a time.
• by the chronology of the texts - usually you would start with the earliest text.

Analysis techniques

Ideally you will have a mixture of quantitative and qualitative analysis.

You need to be able to count and / or tabulate your analysis. This really helps with the qualitative analysis. For example:

• the number of monosyllabic words compared to polysyllabic words
• the frequency of non-standard forms
• the frequency of different sentence types /lengths
• frequency of male / female interruptions
• average length of pauses
• frequency of tag questions / fillers / weak adjectives etc

You need to be able to tabulate the data you are interested in eg listing all the noun phrases used / the phrasal verbs used / idioms used / premodification etc

This lesson you need to start your analysis: decide on the approaches you are going to take and start picking your texts apart! See me for any further info or refer to your AS /A2 textbook!

Nina

AS Travel Writing Resources

Hello!

Here are a couple of resources to help you with your travel writing work. Hope they are useful!

Remember, your homework is to place your monologue, entertaining travel piece and your persuasive travel piece on your blog by Friday 11th October.

Looking forward to reading your pieces. Aim to follow the style models as closely as possible.

Nina

Borneo Text

Travel Writing PPT

A2 Coursework

Morning!

You need to complete working on your introduction and your methodology as soon as possible. I need to have a printed copy of your work by Tuesday 8th October at the latest. You then need to do as much analysis as you can of your texts, most of you will be focussing primarily on the lexical, grammatical, pragmatic and discourse frameworks (not necessarily all at the same time) so make sure you are using appropriate terminology.

Introduction (300 words)

Your introduction must introduce your investigation (!) explaining your hypothesis (what you want to find out). You must also include the types of results you are expecting to find - be fairly specific within the frameworks here - your frameworks should help you to be more exacting about your focus. You can have two or three hypotheses - this will also help you to break down your ideas. You need to identify what the theories that will assist you in your investigation. You should also explain why you were interested in this particular area.

Methodology (300 words) -Write as if you have completed your investigation!

Your methodology has to explain exactly where you got your information from. You need to think about both your primary sources and any secondary sources. For example, where did you find any articles or research on the area you studied. You need to make sure you have explained which frameworks you used to research your data (there needs to be at least two). 

You need to explain how you made the data reliable and comparable. Most successful investigations have a focus on comparing texts with only one or two variables. Think very carefully about what your variables are. Did you manage to get a representative sample? How did you select what were going to focus on? How much data did you collect?  Have you done quantitative and qualitative analysis?

How ethical is your data? For example, any issues with swearing? Any issues with observer's paradox? Did you need to get permission to use the data? Did you have any problems with collecting the data? If you didn't, you need to show that you have engaged with these questions.

If you have transcribed, what conventions did you use to transcribe your data? Make sure you include these.

Finally, your methodology should end with a data description table which summarises the information about your data. It should include: a reference code for each bit of data / what it is / who is involved / where it came from / date it was published / word count.

Remember: I do want a copy of this handed in on Tuesday, however this is just a very first draft and I am not expecting perfection. I do expect to see a clear direction for your analysis. Next week we will go over how to do a systematic analysis of your texts and approaches you can take for when you start to write it up.

Any questions? Any problems? See me!

Nina

A2 Language Work

Hello Language People!

Today I would like you to make sure that all blog work is up to date and complete.

1. You should have an overview of the four main theory areas: Nativism (Chomsky); Behaviourism (Skinner); Cognitive Development theory(Piaget); and Social Interactionist theory (Bruner).
2. You should have a detailed response to the problems children face in their lexical and phonological development (including examples and appropriate terminology. You can refer to researchers too.
3. An analysis of the language features as a child develops - with a particular focus on grammar. Again, aim to use specific linguistic terminology. At the moment your responses are too vague!

That is plenty to be getting on with. I will be looking at and commenting on your blog work over the next few days.

If you manage to complete all that, finish your CLA overview work in the classroom!

Good Luck!

Nina

AS Monologues

Last lesson we explored the features of monologues and analysed the Alan Bennett piece 'Bed Among the Lentils'. Here is the link to the YouTube clip of the monologue if you would like to look at it again. 

Clip from Bed Among the Lentils

You could read or watch the whole series of monologues and consider the meaning and effectiveness of the title.

Also, here is the link to the PowerPoint outlining some of the features of monologues - useful for if you would to like to develop your writing in this area!

Features of Monologues

Hope this is useful!

Nina

PowerPoints on Language Frameworks (AS but A2 might find them useful too!)

Hello!

Thought you might find access to the PowerPoints on the language frameworks we have covered so far quite useful! Enjoy!

Phonological Framework

Lexis and Semantics

Grammar (Lexis)

Grammar

WUGS Experiment and Overgeneralisation

WUG experiment

Watch the following clip from youtube which features the linguistic Jean Berko going thhtough her 'Wug' experiment. What do you think she was trying to show with her experiment? Why did she choose imaginary words?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElabA5YICsA

Overgeneralisations

What is happening in the following examples taken from children's speech?

I runned

two mouses

my foots

he feeled shy

he satted on the truck

he drived himself.

Child Language Acquisition

Hello Linguists!

Read the utterances below which are taken from children of different ages. Post a piece of writing on your blog explaining what the data reveals about the language abilities of the different children and discuss how their ability develops between the different stages.

You need to use all you have learnt over the past few lessons and focus on both lexical and grammatical development.

15 months:

• Bye Mummy
• Isee
• Allgone

20 months:

• All fall down
• Teddy tired
• Gone, where Mummy gone?
• More juice

28 months

• Teddy's hat came off
• Harry's got a big, big green truck

36 months

• Little Luke hit me, he did
• I am going to see Harriet another day tomorrow
• I don't like faces, I want to see children's ITV

40 months

• Look at my knee. I felled over in the playground
• Once upon a time there was a little girl and she got beautiful hair and then the monster killed her and then she got dead and then and then the beautiful fairy came and made them better again

Happy analysing and good luck!

A2 Language Work

Good afternoon!

We have been thinking about children's lexical development.

• Have a look at Jean Piaget's stages of linguistic development. Follow the link below and make notes on what you read.

http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/jean-piagets-theory-child-language-development-9170.html

• How does Piaget's theory on linguistic development support the type and order of words a child uses? Post a response on your blog.

Write an answer to the following question  and post it on your blog.

• Explain some of the difficulties a child might encounter in it acquisition of vocabulary from the time it speaks to the age of seven. You can also refer to some phonological features, as well as considering ideas such as the use of concrete and abstract nouns, overextension, acquisition of grammar words etc.

A2 Language Work

Hello A2 Language Lovers!

Setting up a blog

The first thing you need to do is ensure that you have your own blog up and running - some of you will have one from last year and some of you will need to set one up today. Once you have done this I need to have your blog address.

Using your blog

Each week you need to post a blog outlining and reviewing what you have learnt in the lessons, including key terminology and ideas. This record can be a reminder of what you have done and it will help you to identify the areas that you need to work on. It is a good habit to get into and I will be checking to see that you are keeping on top of this!

Child Language Acquisition

• Read the following article on outlining current research on babbling. This should support the work that we did last lesson.
  Babbling Article

• In our first lesson on CLA, you all came up with a range of thoughts and ideas about how we acquire language. Your task is to find out some more information about your ideas by researching the following theories and theorists.

1. We are born with the ability to learn a language. This is a theory of innateness - have a look at what Noam Chomsky thinks about this.
2. We learn by imitating the people around us and by being rewarded for good use of language. This is an imitation and behaviourist theory. B.F Skinner is the theorist to research here.
3. We learn by interacting with different people. This is a social interactionist theory. Have a look for Jerome Bruner (remember peek a boo!)
4. Our language develops as we understand the world we live in. This  is a cognitive development theory. Jean Piaget is important here.

Make sure you make lots of notes and aim to post a summary of your findings on your blog. It is important to have a basic grasp of these theories as they will underpin your understanding of CLA.

Happy researching!

Task for AS Language

A final task....

•Choose a genre and purpose of your choice and write about yourself.

•For instance, a magazine article reporting an event in your life, an interview with yourself from the future, an autobiographical account of a memory, a monologue in character, a poem about your hopes, a leaflet…etc.

•I’m looking for creativity, accuracy and a clear structure.

•Post it on your new blog...this can be completed at home.

Remember to email me your blog address.

New Words

Good Morning!

Language usage changes all the time and words can come and go! The Oxford English Dictionary Online has recently updated its list of words to be included in the most recent version of the OED. Have a look through the new entries by clicking on the link below - are they familiar? Are there any words or expressions that you use that should be in the OED? Or any words that need to have a meaning update?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/aug/28/twerk-geek-chic-oxford-dictionary

Also, there was a fascinating documentary on the BBC on 3rd September about a woman whose language changed completely after suffering from a type of stroke and she woke up speaking with a Chinese accent. What was interesting was the way that her change in speech patterns had a profound effect on her sense of self, showing what an important role our 'linguistic fingerprints' have in creating our identity. You might be able to catch it on iPlayer if you're quick!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b039sm17/The_Woman_Who_Woke_Up_Chinese/

Apostrophes and Exclamation Marks

Here are a couple of articles that are quite interesting and might get you thinking about how we use apostrophes and exclamation marks. What issues are raised by the articles? What do the articles suggest about language? What would you be interested in exploring further? Do you agree or disagree with what is being said in the articles?

Apostrophe article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23806585

Exclamation mark article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23781044

Happy reading.

Welcome to my blog to help you with your English Language studies. I will use this blog to post any interesting articles and useful information that will support and enhance your study of this fascinating subject. Watch this space!